Imagawa Sadayo

Who They Were

Imagawa Sadayo (今川貞世) was a Japanese poet and military commander of the early Muromachi period, born in 1326 and dead on 5 October 1420. He is also widely remembered under the name Imagawa Ryōshun (今川了俊), the name he took later in life. He belonged to the Imagawa clan, a warrior house that claimed blood ties to the Ashikaga shōguns, and he served the Ashikaga bakufu — the military government headed by the shōgun — as a provincial governor, a judge, and for nearly a quarter of a century as the shōgun's deputy on the island of Kyūshū.

His career spans the violent transition from the Kamakura period, which ended in 1333, into the Muromachi age. He was born in the first year of the Karyaku era (嘉暦, karyaku), and he lived long enough to see the Ashikaga order he had helped build settle into something like stability. He was a fighting man who was also a serious student of poetry, and both halves of that life are recorded.

Life and Career

Sadayo's father was Imagawa Norikuni, who had backed Ashikaga Takauji, the first Ashikaga shōgun. For that support Norikuni was granted the post of constable — shugo (守護), a provincial military governor — of Suruga Province, in what is now Shizuoka Prefecture. That appointment raised the Imagawa family's standing sharply, and the family remained prominent into the Edo period.

Sadayo himself held a series of offices: shugo, daimyo, a seat on the Hikitsuke (引付), the bakufu's high court of justice, and a place in the Samurai-dokoro (侍所), the board that policed and administered the warrior class. In 1371 he was appointed Kyūshū tandai (九州探題), the shōgun's representative in Kyūshū, and he held that command until 1395. The tandai was the bakufu's most exposed military posting, facing the Southern Court's holdouts and the shifting loyalties of the Kyūshū warrior houses, and Sadayo spent those years campaigning and negotiating across the island.

He married a daughter of Toki Yorinao. Among his children were Imagawa Sadaomi, Ozaki Sadakane, and Imagawa Mitsunori, and a daughter who married Kira Toshiuji. He died in 1420 at the age of about ninety-four.

Why They Matter

Sadayo matters for two reasons that rarely sit together in one person. As Kyūshū tandai from 1371 to 1395, he was the man charged with holding the western half of Japan for the Ashikaga shōguns during the long struggle between the Northern and Southern Courts, and he did it for twenty-four years. As a poet, he was a pupil and associate of the leading literary figures of his day and a practitioner of renga (連歌), linked verse, as well as of classical waka. His judgments on poetry were respected enough to be argued with, and his writings on poetics survived him.

He also stands as an example of how the Imagawa clan's fortunes were built: service to the Ashikaga, rewarded with provincial office, converted into lasting regional power. The family that Norikuni raised to the constableship of Suruga would, generations later, produce Imagawa Yoshimoto, one of the great daimyo of the Sengoku period.

The Name in Japanese

The formal name is written 今川貞世.

• Kana: いまがわ さだよ
• Romaji: Imagawa Sadayo

Broken down character by character:

• 今 (read ima) — "now," "the present." In this name it carries the sense of "present" or "current."
• 川 (read gawa) — "river." The reading shifts from kawa to gawa because it follows another element in a compound, a common sound change in Japanese place and family names.
• 貞 (read sada) — "upright," "faithful," "chaste." A virtue name, frequently used in warrior and noble names of the medieval period.
• 世 (read yo) — "world," "generation," "age."

So 今川 is the clan name, literally "the present river," and 貞世 is the personal name, roughly "upright generation" or "faithful age." The clan name is read Imagawa; the personal name is read Sadayo, with the two kanji run together rather than pronounced separately.

He is equally well known by the name 今川了俊 (いまがわ りょうしゅん, Imagawa Ryōshun). The element 了 (read ryō) means "to finish" or "to complete," and 俊 (read shun) means "excellent" or "outstanding." This is the name under which much of his poetry and his writings on poetics circulate, and readers looking for him in literary sources will usually find him as Ryōshun rather than Sadayo.

Legacy

Sadayo's reputation rests on the combination of a long military governorship and a genuine literary output. He governed Kyūshū for the Ashikaga bakufu from 1371 to 1395, and he wrote poetry and criticism that were still being cited after his death in 1420. The Imagawa clan he helped elevate remained a major house from the Muromachi period through to the Edo period, rooted in Suruga Province, and its later prominence traces directly back to the offices his father secured and he himself held.

For students of Japanese, his two names are worth knowing separately: 今川貞世, the formal name of the officeholder, and 今川了俊, the name of the poet. Both refer to the same man, and both appear in histories of the Muromachi period.